The making of digitalization: Like nailing jelly to a wall

Abstract

Though ‘digitalization’ has become a buzzword and policy objective in public-sector development, the struggle to grasp and define it as a modern phenomenon continues. Furthermore, research has long shown that it is difficult to extract the value with which digitalization is associated. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is to uncover the enactment by a specific set of actors of digitalization as production and reproduction practices. We interviewed a group of governmentally sanctioned regional digitalization coordinators to identify how digitalization was translated and implemented by the appointed professionals. We applied Orlikowski and Gash’s three levels of technology (nature, strategy, and use) and combined these with Feenberg’s matrix of four views on technology to produce an analytical framework. Our findings show that the making of digitalization can be described like ‘nailing jelly to a wall’, owing to the lack description of its capabilities and functionalities, coupled with a raison d’etre that is highly elusive beyond ‘change’, in very general terms.